


Freeze

by daphnerunning



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jealousy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karina pretends she's happy for them. Everyone knows she's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freeze

Everyone knew.

Now, everyone is happy for them. 

Karina pretends she is too, because that’s what you do when two of your friends get together. 

Nathan notices, gives her a conciliatory little pat on the head. Says something about first loves being the most difficult to get over, then starts waxing rhapsodical about some rugby player. Needless to say, it doesn’t help.

Ivan notices, always made fun of her for her “crush.” He teases her still, all in good fun.

Yeah. Fun.

It’s humiliating, the way everyone suddenly “knew all along” how she felt--and how they “knew all along” about Kotetsu and Barnaby. They talk to her like she’s a child, like she’s too young to know what a relationship is--like she hasn’t spent the last two years thinking about being his wife, bearing him children, growing old with the most wonderful man she’s ever met. Maybe it didn’t start like that, started like anything else with thinking he was adorable, wanting to make him smile, but she was sure she knew what she was signing up for.

The way they talk, Karina is suddenly sure they’ve never had a first love like hers. Do they feel sick when they think about it? Do they feel that sensation like being punched in the stomach whenever they see that man with someone else?

It’s not just that she imagined his arms around her, imagined his beard rasping gently on her cheek, her neck. It’s not just that she prepared herself for a life as a stepmother, even _knowing_ that she’s nowhere near ready. It’s not just that she’s wakes up sometimes with tears on her face because she _knows_ that the dream is a tease, tantalizing her with something she’ll never have. 

It’s that it isn’t _fair_.

She hates hating her friend. She hates thinking that she wants to wrap her hands around his throat, to freeze him to the wall and scream at him, to tear out his hair and demand to know _why him_?

 _Why not me?_

And he looks at her with _pity_ in those pretty green eyes.

She feels exposed, vulnerable, naked when those pitying looks go her way. _I know what you want,_ they say, _and I’ve got it. Sorry._

She kind of wants to kill him.

Kotetsu never gives her a look like that. He’s never noticed how she feels at all. She supposes she should feel grateful that he can’t tell she’s lying. She congratulates them, gives her best fake smile for the cameras. He ruffles her hair, gives her that goofy smile, and her heart breaks all over again.

She wants to reach out and grab him, like Barnaby did in front of the cameras. It’s too late, though. She knows that when his eyes light up to see Barnaby, when his smile gets soft and intimate, when he moves to take the younger man in his arms.

Karina _aches_.

She thinks tears should freeze in her eyes, but they don’t. They never have. All she can do is hope they freeze in her heart.

Maybe if she’s frozen, it won’t hurt anymore.


End file.
